Unforgivable: A Novel

I KNEW VERY WELL THAT SHE WASN’T THERE. I WAS listening to the wonderfully plaintive, husky voice of Patti Smith singing Pastime Paradise as I watched Alice’s plane coming in to land, cumbersome and shimmering in the still warm, orange-tinged, late-summer sunshine, knowing full well that she wasn’t on board.

I did not normally have this kind of premonition—something I was almost blamed for—but that morning I had warned Judith that our daughter would not be on the plane and that it would be better to wait before ordering the meat. What would be the point of that? I had not known how to explain. Judith maintained that she would at least have phoned us.

I had shrugged my shoulders. My wife was probably right. Barely a minute later, however, I became convinced once more that Alice would not be there.

When he disembarked from the plane, Roger announced that she had not been home for two days. I said nothing and hugged the twin girls, who did not appear in the least bothered by their mother’s absence and were making a point of yawning.

You’re having marvelous weather, he said to me. It will do them good.

As a rule, children arriving from the city were pale and often had large rings under their eyes, and these two little creatures were no exception.

In a confidential tone, out of the girls’ hearing, Roger made it clear to me that he’d had enough. There was no need for him to say so. Nobody, on seeing him, could think that this chap looked well.

Mmm . . . , I muttered, what is it this time? A film? A play?

It doesn’t matter what it’s to do with, Francis. I couldn’t care less whether it’s for this reason or that. I’ve had enough, Francis. She can go to hell.

Without any question, he had been patient, but all I could do was to encourage him to hang on—aware, as far as I was concerned, of the rapidly approaching specter of having to look after the twins should the relationship explode, a situation that Judith and I had experienced two years previously when they had set off on a trip together in order to start afresh on a new footing.

At the age of sixty, there were certain things I was no longer prepared to discuss. I longed for peace. I wanted to read books, listen to music, go for early morning walks in the mountains or on the beach. Looking after children, even if they were my own flesh and blood as Judith never hesitated to remind me, scarcely interested me anymore. I had taken care of Alice and her sister in their time and I seemed to have exhausted the entire range of experiences potentially capable of stimulating the youthful old fellow I had become today; my time was precious, even if I was writing virtually nothing any longer.

And so it was that later on, at the end of the meal, when I was given the task of taking the girls down to the seashore before they began wreaking havoc in the garden from top to bottom, I was unable to prevent myself from grimacing, for I had been on the very point of settling upstairs, in the pleasant shade of my office, with my laptop on my knees, that is to say in my armchair, with my hands folded behind my head—oh how I should like death to come and take me unawares in such a posture, if possible, instead of in a hospital with tubes up my nose—and then everything fell apart, toppling into the sea, as if from the thirty-sixth floor, it all collapsed. Thanks to two little eight-year-old girls deserted by their mother. I gave them each a hard candy and told them they were to wait for me outside while I tried to call Alice, who did not answer.

Now, Roger, believe me, I’m on your side. I know her. But what is it, two days . . . ? Forty-eight hours? Well . . . she’s done worse, hasn’t she? There may not be any need to panic . . .

My words were meant to be reassuring. I personally had no cause to be anxious, as far as Alice was concerned, just because of two miserable days without news, other than that certainty I’d had when I woke up that she would not be getting off the plane. I didn’t know how to interpret the intuition, but I could not get it out of my mind. Alice sometimes disappeared for an entire week. So why should these two days arouse such a vague uneasiness in me?

I bet you we’ll have some news before the weekend is over, I added eventually.

There was very little chance of my being wrong. Alice never lost her wits completely. Had she not married a banker? God knows she went around with street musicians, layabouts, and drug addicts at the time, but she must have had her head firmly screwed onto her shoulders to pick a banker from out of the pack. You gave us one hell of a fright, I told her on the day of her wedding. Her only response was to look daggers at me.

The following day, Roger spoke to me about some marks Alice had on her thighs and her breasts. I hadn’t slept very well. The twins had had nightmares and Roger had given them four mg of Rohypnol on my advice. Marks, you say? I frowned as I fingered some overripe mangoes at my usual greengrocer. What do you mean, marks, Roger?

I thought about this throughout the afternoon. I wondered whether she would ever try to protect me from worrying about her. Things did not seem to be going very well. Roger tried to call her several times, without success.

As dusk fell, the breeze picked up and Roger helped me put away the parasol and anything else that might be blown away beneath the dark and rumbling sky, other than the bougainvillea flowers that the gusts of wind beat back sharply against the wall of the house and beheaded. The beam from the lighthouse swept across the vast and impressive dark clouds.

Judith returned just before the storm. From San Sebastián. The gale had been following her all the way from San Sebastián, she said. There had been flashes of heat lightning during the afternoon.

The twins were as alike as two peas in a pod, but the one who was a fraction younger, Anne-Lucie, jumped to her feet and declared that she was going to put on her swimsuit. A promise was a promise. Outside, all along the front, clusters of whitish foam were being blown up by the rough sea and were smashing into the palm trees that lined the beach. You had to shout to make yourself heard. Roger seemed completely befuddled.

Few people came to the swimming pool in the evenings—on that particular day, there was nobody—and we sat down beside the bay windows that looked out over the choppy sea. The view was splendid—it was as if we were sitting at the bow of an ocean liner, hurtling through the spray.

Judith was in a quandary. To answer your question, Roger, I believe Alice is an intelligent person. She’s past that age when you do something just for the sake of it. Let’s trust her. She needs a breath of fresh air, if you like. It’s vital as far as she is concerned. Why should we necessarily see anything bad in that?

I kept an eye on Anne-Lucie, who was a long time coming to the surface, while at the same time nodding my head and agreeing with Judith.

Am I wrong to see anything bad in it? Roger yelped. Am I wrong, Judith?

Our eyes met. I have never claimed that my daughter was a saint. Her indiscretions were public knowledge. News travels fast in those circles. I did not really see that I had anything to feel guilty about.

Please don’t look at me like that. I reckon I’ve given my children a good education. I’ve devoted countless days and nights to it. To teaching them the difference between good and evil. Months and years, Roger. I’m not responsible for anything, my friend.

I stood up to help Anne-Lucie out of the pool after she appeared to have sprained her wrist. I left her in charge of her father so that I could go for a swim.

I was about to be sixty. The doctors advised swimming as much as possible and eating healthily in order to live a long life. I could cope with both instructions easily.

After a week, we decided to inform the police. The spring tides had begun. Roger scarcely opened his mouth anymore. Every possible telephone call had been made, we had questioned her friends and the friends of her friends, and even others, who certainly weren’t very pleased, but nobody knew a thing, nobody had seen her or spoken to her these past ten days, nobody knew her whereabouts.

Judith set off for San Sebastián once more and so I spent almost a week on my own with Roger and the girls. I wondered whether it was his intention to starve himself to death. He was only just thirty years old and was already beginning to lose his hair.

I’m not saying it’s easy to earn one’s living, Roger. I’m saying that it’s easy to lose a woman. There’s a slight difference. Opening your eyes and seeing that she’s no longer there, that you’ve lost her.

Sometimes I left him in a particular spot and found him again an hour or two later in the very same place, doing absolutely nothing, and half asleep. He probably called that struggling.

We spent a whole morning with the police investigators, long enough in any case to realize we should expect nothing from this quarter; these men and women went back home every evening and confronted their own problems, their partners, their children, their neighbors. Even though they appeared to be concerned, you didn’t feel they were ready to leap out of their armchairs to bring Alice back to us.

I, too, was overcome with anxiety. Time dragged on in its dull and superficial way. I went out with the twins. When we returned home, we would sometimes discover their father stretched out on the sofa; lively was hardly the word.

I did the cooking; Judith had had to extend her visit to the other side of the Spanish frontier in order to complete the sale of a seafront property for which prices had soared in recent months. The sky was still overcast. Alice. My daughter. I thought of her constantly. I could see entire scenes in my mind’s eye. Cooking, for example. I had taught her to cook. During the two years we had lived together—between the accident and the day that I married Judith—I had tried to alleviate our ordeal by teaching her certain basic recipes, an omelet with chilies, for example, or a fricassee of flambéed kidneys. We were able to talk. We had succeeded in keeping ourselves afloat. A real achievement.

I hired a detective. Roger suggested sharing the costs, but I refused. I chose a woman, a certain Anne-Marguerite Lémo, who lived half a mile from my home and whom I had known at school.

From the information I had been able to glean locally, it was clear that Anne-Marguerite was the best in her field. I called on her straightaway to tell her about our problem.

It had been a good forty years since we had last seen one another; we swapped past memories and spent a little while bringing each other up to date with our respective lives. She had a son. Her husband had died of a heart attack. For a private detective who was no longer young, her figure was still quite shapely.

Anne-Marguerite had heard about the accident in which my wife and one of my daughters had been killed in the autumn of 1996. The newspapers had devoted a lot of space to it. I accepted her condolences and explained what had happened.

I gave her two thousand euros to start with. She accepted only half, giving the excuse that we had been good friends years ago. She was exaggerating. Everybody screwed everyone else at that time. She conscientiously took a few notes as the rain fell outside the window of the office she shared with an insurance company in the center of town.

I can’t wait to find Alice, she said as she reached out her hand to me.

At last, a little enthusiasm. At last, someone who gave me an open smile. She shook hands vigorously.

Anne-Marguerite Lémo. My near-neighbor. What else was this world but a tiny village full of hilarious coincidences?

Roger returned to Paris a few days later. I didn’t try to stop him, quite the reverse, I had even encouraged him to go. I much preferred looking after the twins to his gloomy company—which never failed to fuel my anxiety.

We agreed to keep each other informed about the slightest bit of information and I went with him to the airport after having given him two Xanax tablets and a friendly pat on the back.

There was no better grandmother than Judith for the little girls—they adored her—and so I was fortunate enough not to be the one whose duty it was to read the bedtime story. When Judith was there.

I didn’t know whether she was in the process of selling the entire La Concha Bay, but we didn’t see much of her. When she came home, she listened to our news. When she left again, she gave me various instructions.

She maintained that she was snowed under with work. Any kind of sexual relationship between us was more or less nonexistent.

I read Bridget Jones’s Diary to them up until the moment a deep silence descended and directed me to tiptoe out of the room, holding my breath.

Once night had fallen and I was alone, I could not resist the urge to ring Anne-Marguerite, knowing very well that if she had not called me it was because there was nothing new to report, but she never seemed irritated or disturbed by my foolish phone calls and appeared, on the contrary, full of concern. I felt grateful to her. As one hour followed another, I felt the need to talk about Alice. Uttering her name protected her, it seemed to me.

The first mention of her disappearance in the press made my blood run cold, and my phone started ringing continuously. People in these circles were hungry for news and half the actors and actresses in the country—I kept the other half waiting—appeared determined to wail into my ear for ages. The sky was low. Each time I put down the phone, I caught the little girls gazing at me and I cursed myself for having mentioned their mother’s disappearance in their presence—what was I thinking of—until the moment my phone started vibrating again.

In the afternoon, I switched off the vibrator—I had turned off the ringing sound some time ago. After a while, all those sighs, all those tears fused into one dull and gloomy lament that I could do without.

I prepared a sumptuous sort of afternoon snack, so as to excuse myself for having forgotten their midday meal, which consisted of a large bowl of cereal and puffed rice; I had instinctively stocked the cupboards while they were there and bought a supply of low-fat milk as well.

Anne-Marguerite’s son was in prison. She told me about this as I was preparing for the tea party by flipping some pancakes. She shrugged her shoulders. A burglary that had been bungled. I looked at her incredulously for a moment, as my empty frying pans began to smoke; unless one enjoys having a rough time of it, the lot of a father or a mother is really the worst that can happen to one, isn’t it? Examples abound, do they not?

I thought of you as I opened my newspaper, she continued. It may well be that you’re in for a difficult time, Francis.

It certainly was. With or without the